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They have created a wordle and were able to insert it as an image. The also created tables and added text and pictures to share more of their favorite things and information about themselves. These websites are private to our google domain since they do contain some limited personal information.

We had a discussion about what information was okay to share on this website. The can share a "blabberize" that they customized to look like themselves (in an avatar format), but they cannot put a picture of themselves on it if it were going to be live to the public.

The students are very excited to share their websites with their classmates and future teachers.

celia

sebastian

chloe

Welcome back to Avoca West! I am really excited to get to know my 1st graders and get back together with those awesome 2nd and 3rd graders. We are "taking care of business" these first couple of weeks. We discuss the classroom rules and what being Respectful, Responsible, Safe and Kind look like in the computer lab.

We have a new lab of 24 iMacs (actually they arrived just after spring break last year) and we are really looking forward to using them for some great projects. They really are quite beautiful and they are just as powerful as they are pretty. I'm really excited about the built-in camera and all the other bells and whistles.

We have some great ideas for this year so make sure you check back here and visit your child's blog to keep up with what's going on with technology at Avoca.

1st Grade

My youngest students just finished with their first experience with VoiceThread in a project that tied in with a cross-curricular unit on Fairy Tales. Each student created an alternate ending for  a class-selected fairy tale. These students also made dioramas, drew a scene from their favorite fairy tale and created an invitation to their evening musical performance using Pages.

Ms. Holinger's Class reimagined the ending to Rapunzel.

Ms. Chapko's Class created alternate endings for Hansel and Gretel.

Currently, all the first graders are using Kidspiration to create an "All About Me" project that will introduce themselves to their second grade teacher for next year. We are exporting the pictures as a picture file (.jpg) and uploading them to GoogleDocs as part of our continuing effort to go green and reduce printing and paper costs here at Avoca West.

2nd Grade

In second grade, we worked with Wordle for the first time, creating a word cloud to accompany their biography project. Make sure you check out your student's blog to see their project. We also used Numbers to create a chart based on the number of Skittles they had in a snack size bag. They customized the colors in their chart to match the colors of the skittles and then took a screenshot of their chart and posted it to their blog.

Right now, the second graders are using ComicLife to create their "All About Me" project to introduce themselves to their next year's 3rd grade teacher. These projects will not be available to view online due to privacy concerns.

3rd Grade

Third grade Encore Tech works a little different than many of the other grade levels. One of their main areas of focus is creating a sculpture using PicoCrickets and then making that sculpture come alive with computer programming. There are 3 basic ways to animate their sculpture, lights, sound, and motion. Each sculpture has to incorporate 2 of the 3 methods. We only have one class set of PicoCrickets so we rotate that unit from class to class throughout the school year. Another major unit is Digital Photography with editing in both iPhoto and Photoshop Elements.

enrique-henry

car

Currently, all 3rd graders are creating their "All About Me" project using GoogleSites to make a webpage that their 4th grade teacher will be able to view. Their webpages will only be visible to the teachers who have access within our Google domain.

" BrainNook is a virtual world for kids where they can develop math and English skills while playing in the free online playground.  There are over a hundred education games packed into theBrainNook virtual world, all of them are based on foundational math, English, and grammar concepts.  The math games cover concepts from single digit addition to 3D spatial visualization.  English games cover everything from building simple sentences to counting syllables.  The games are all woven into a fun virtual world that students can explore and unlock.  BrainNook also strengthens students reading, reasoning, decision-making skills, analysis, and computer literacy.  Students choose a character (alien) and name, when they enter BrainNook for the first time, they are dropped onto Earth where their spaceship has crashed. They are greeted by an earthling named Bella who teaches them how to navigate the world, and earn stars by playing games. The stars that are earned can be used to buy back spaceship parts.   Students can travel to several locations within the virtual world that are based on real-life regions of the Earth  Students learn about each region through trivia, question popups, and local artifacts. In each world students can play math and English games with other players in the safe online environment. As they build up their skills, new worlds will be unlocked and they can buy items from the local market or work on assembling their spaceship by assembling puzzles.  The games in BrainNook are scaffolded so it adjusts to students ability level as they progress.  Games can be played individually or in head-to-head competition. Because this site is geared toward elementary students, no personal information or personal messages are included in the virtual world."

Have you tried it? What do you think?